Governor Murphy signs bill creating maternal health authority

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New Jersey will launch a new agency to bid to reduce deaths during and after birth under a bill Gov. Phil Murphy signed Monday.

The New Jersey Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority and an accompanying health center in Trenton will seek to reduce birth-related deaths, an area where the United States fares worse than most of the developed world and even some developing nations.

The authority will oversee a Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Center in Trenton that will provide pre- and postnatal services, offer perinatal workforce training, and research new models of care. It will further seek to expand the availability of prenatal care.

“This center will be an incubator for research and development, an academic and perinatal workforce training center, a data collaborative, and so much more,” First Lady Tammy Murphy said at a bill signing ceremony in Trenton. “It will offer comprehensive clinical services for moms before, during, and after pregnancy.”

The new authority will assume the powers and funding of the New Jersey Maternal Care Quality Collaborative, which reviewed birth-related deaths, created educational programs on maternal health, and compiled statistics on maternal mortality.

It will also be able to issue grants and loans to private or public institutions to further maternal health.

The new agency will be steered by a 15-member board that includes seven members of Murphy’s cabinet and eight members of the public that he will appoint. The public members will be paid $20,000 annually.

The board will be required to coordinate with a separate 11-member advisory committee of maternal and infant health providers and those who have received such care. The law requires four of the advisory panel’s members to live in Trenton and mandates the remaining seven reside in geographically disparate regions that face high rates of Black and Hispanic infant mortality.

Advisory committee members will also receive an annual $20,000 stipend.

The bill’s signing comes amid declines in New Jersey’s maternal mortality. The state now places 29th in the nation, up from 47th last year, in rankings maintained by the March of Dimes.

“Forty-seventh to 29th is a big leap, but I don’t think any of us wake up in the morning to say, ‘Yes, we’re 29th,’” the governor said. “We’re not going to stop until that 29 turns to a one, but it does show, without question, that we are moving the needle and moving in the right direction.”

Despite advances, risks remain in many of New Jersey’s southern counties and in some urban areas in the state’s northeast, and racial disparities have persisted through the decline.

Black mothers and members of certain other minority groups are between two and three times more likely to suffer pregnancy-related deaths than their white counterparts.

“They do not become mothers,” said Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), the bill’s prime Senate sponsor. “They become statistics.”

The bill creating the authority was among a flurry of bills lawmakers approved before they recessed for the summer on June 30, and it emerged with far less direct funding than its sponsors had originally proposed.

Earlier versions of the bill would have provided $23.2 million in initial funding, but that figure was reduced to $2.2 million in the version Murphy signed into law Monday, less than the $3.2 million once allocated for the authority’s startup costs.

Murphy, who did not say how or at what level the authority would be funded in future years, said he does not expect the reduced initial funding will delay the authority’s launch.

“We’re going to need every penny of it, but we’ve made a lot of progress,” he said. “I think we would’ve known a while ago if there was going to be an issue.”

The authority will also receive $50 million from the state Economic Development Authority that it can use on capital costs — like a loan or grant to create a maternal health center elsewhere in the state, for example — that was set aside in the current and last year’s budgets.

The governor said the state is also seeking a $25 million federal grant for the center.

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